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Elevated rates of autism in transgender and gender-diverse individuals
- wozzeck 6y agoAdding another 2020 study that observes the autism / transgender overlap: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1750946719301540 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S175094671... Interestingly enough, the correlation is observed to a greater extent with trans men (though not in all studies).
- jauer 6y ago> observed to a greater extent with trans men I wonder if that's a result of autism being under-diagnosed in women (and that under-diagnosis carrying over to trans women).
- wozzeck 6y agoI would be surprised if that carried over to trans women, i.e. people assigned male at birth, especially if most are diagnosed as children (and thus prior to transitioning, in most cases).
- ladberg 6y agoI'd bet that jauer meant to say trans men (the terminology can be confusing at first) because autism is typically diagnosed earlier in life than a gender transition, so if it's under-diagnosed in women then it would also be under-diagnosed in trans men.
- jauer 6y agoTransitioned a while back, didn't get it backwards :) To elaborate: I was wondering if trans men (AFAB) acquire the male-gendered autistic traits and trans women (AMAB) acquire the female-gendered traits (and underdiagnoses from diagnostic criteria being focused on male norms). Why I'm curious: I was diagnosed with Asperger's as an adult (no access to MH care as a child because raised in a cult), transitioned, and after 3 years of HRT got a new psych who laughed at the idea that I could have AS and removed it from my chart. His reasoning was that my interpersonal skills were not impaired in a way that is typical of autistic people. This is a common reason why women with autism are under-diagnosed. I had terrible interpersonal skills pre-transition. HRT gave me access to a wider range of emotions, which might have something to do with it. E.g. I can actually understand the emotional currents in movies, which is nice. But, now I'm curious if autistic symptoms are another one of those things that change with hormones.
- wozzeck 6y agoOh, thanks for the clarification! I'm also wondering if I've become "more autistic" since transitioning (to male), but it's not clear to me how much of it would be due to hormonal changes and how much would be due to no longer needing to perform certain kinds of social/emotional upkeep.
- ladberg 6y agoDamn I’m gonna see myself on /r/DontYouKnowWhoIAm :)
- echurilov 6y agoThe transgender and gender-diverse vs. cisgender effect sizes are equivalent to or larger than the autism vs. non-autism effect sizes and the cisgender male vs. cisgender female effect sizes in non-autistic individuals. if i understand that right, whether you're trans is a better indicator of whether you have autistic traits than a) your assigned sex or b) whether you are diagnosed with autism
- simooooo 6y agoThat is quite a sentence
- yodelshady 6y agoThat doesn't necessarily surprise me, actually. I suspect a decent chunk of people here a) consider themselves to have autistic behavioural traits, b) don't see the value of a diagnosis. The term "diagnosis", to me at least, implies a disorder. Deciding what is a behavioural trait and what is a disorder is, at a guess, not robustly decidable.
- SubiculumCode 6y agoThis is my 2020 paper in a similar vein. We found attenuated sex differences in amygdala resting-state connectivity between boys and girls with autism, but robust sex differences in amygdala connectivity in typically developing boys and girls. This pattern was observed using both univariate and multivariate analytical approaches, consistent with gender incoherence hypothesis, which stands in contrast with extreme male brain theory. [addendum: We are examining other networks now, and this pattern is found in other prominent brain networks, but not all.] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2451902219302204 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S24519...
- alicemaz 6y agooh interesting. I've had a pet theory for awhile now re: trans/autism comorbidity that they're better thought of as symptoms (among others! op's link notes higher incidence of every surveyed mental disorder) of some underlying brain abnormality, rather than being tangled up in some causal relationship with each other. had not heard of gender incoherence theory before
- crooked-v 6y agoOne thing I would respectfully suggest here is to use language like 'atypical' rather than 'abnormal', as it avoids some of the unpleasant subtext of the latter word. (At least so far - the euphemism treadmill makes for an unending race, but it's still worth putting in the effort.)
- odessacubbage 6y agomaybe it's an overly optimistic hill to die on but imo, the best thing we could do for divergent people is to normalize abnormality rather than codify softer language to avoid describing it as abnormal or creating 32 new checkboxes of 'normal'
- gowld 6y agoYou mean eliminate "abnormality" and "divergence" as a concept? Yes. Better to focus on needs difficulties and abilities, not irrelevant comparisons to population averages. And better to treat differences as something to accept appreciate, and not arbitrarily idealize the median. "Normality" is a factor in estimating public health costs, not relevant to individual care.
- contravariant 6y agoI'm gonna be honest, using kernel density estimates on discrete data is almost bad enough to make me discount the result outright. Almost.
- SubiculumCode 6y ago"In all five datasets, we investigated if rates of autism diagnosis significantly differed by gender by first conducting χ2 tests (Model 1, unadjusted), and then by conducting logistic regressions adjusted for age and educational attainment as covariates (Model 2, adjusted)." It appears the kernel density estimates is being used as a display of the data, not the actual method of statistical analysis, or perhaps I missed something.
- contravariant 6y agoUsing a technique that's entirely inappropriate for the kind of data you're dealing with doesn't exactly inspire confidence. That it doesn't affect the actual result is lucky, I guess.
- Pfhreak 6y agoHanging out in trans circles (as a non-binary person myself), this seems commonly known within the community. Interesting to see research done here, but I'd be careful about over generalizing (e.g. "All trans people are neurodiverse"). Edit: Also, happy to answer questions about being non-binary (specifically, gender fluid) if folks have good faith questions.
- empthought 6y agoWhat is the distinguishing characteristic of someone who is gender fluid vs. someone who is not?
- anchpop 6y agoThere isn't one, besides them identifying as genderfluid. Same as any other gender identity (like man or woman). I think this makes the terms slightly less useful but it is very important to some people that they're used this way
- scott31 6y ago> Same as any other gender identity (like man or woman). I think there are some distinguishing characteristics for someone who is male vs someone who is female.
- Kaze404 6y ago"Male" and "female" aren't genders.
- empthought 6y agoNeither is “gender fluid,” though, is it?
- grogenaut 6y agoIt would be helpful if you chose to educate by linking to the definitions you are using instead of just chastising for someone not knowing the terminology you are using. The Wikipedia article for gender mentions that the terms sex and gender for biological gender/sex have flip flopped multiple times in the last 30 years. HN is supposed to be a place where people learn, not an anger pit like the rest of the web.
- moultano 6y agoAre there leading candidate hypotheses for the cause of autism? Do we know things like heritability, correlation with environmental pollutants, anything?
- apsec112 6y agoThe short answer is that nobody really knows, although it probably has some genetic component. Wikipedia has a long article covering the different hypotheses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_autism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_autism
- timwaagh 6y agobecause the definition consists of many different phenomena and in places does not specify whether all or some should be present, i suspect there is never going to be any single cause.
- ghthor 6y agoEnvironmental pollution coming from mercury andaluminum in vaccines. Minor mercury poisoning has an similar symptom list with autism.
- proverbialbunny 6y agoIn psychology how we define a thing is constructed from a series of observable characteristics. The problem is, there are multiple situations that can cause the same series of characteristics. "Are there leading candidate hypotheses for the cause of autism?" is like asking, "Are there leading candidate hypotheses for the cause of a headache?" There is no single cause. What we do know is most people with autism do not process facial expressions as much as the average person. This causes a lack of paying attention to body language, which then ripples into most of the characteristics that define autism. Studies have shown eye training on infants can completely remove symptoms of autism. But a root cause is more complex when there are multiple. Some people get overloaded when they look at people's faces. Some just didn't pick up the proper habits of looking at others when interacting with them. The root cause can vary from person to person.
- vmception 6y agoSome detractors often say transgender people have mental health issues. But they mean it in the sense that they should be in an asylum or should not be catered to. A reality is that: A) Gender dysphoria is an imbalance of neural state. Therefore that would by definition be a mental health issue but not like the detractors say. B) Acknowledging and accommodating gender dysphoria discomfort costs cisgender people nothing and unlocks the productiveness of an additional population in society.
- himinlomax 6y ago> But they mean it in the sense that they should be in an asylum or should not be catered to. They sound like bad people. Let me offer an alternative explanation: you're thinking about a persyn made of dried grass.
- crooked-v 6y agoAs someone who heard those comments made about a trans friend of mine in childhood: yes, those people do exist.
- hh3k0 6y ago> But they mean it in the sense that they should be in an asylum or should not be catered to. I have often heard it in a sense of "should not be catered to but rather given medical help". A fellow student once told me that he considers the current way of treating gender dysphoria irresponsible and that, if we'd treat schizophrenia the way we treat gender dysphoria, we'd all have to aknowledge the voices they hear and pretend we hear them too. I didn't know how to respond to that. I still don't, actually. My knowledge about anything mental health is quite limited.
- vmception 6y agothat response honestly sounds like he is referring to a caricature of schizophrenia as the ultimate ignorable and irreconcilable mental health disorder and doesn't actually know how we treat schizophrenia either how do we treat schizophrenia? it is something that can also be managed thats the primary limitation of the analogy. the secondary limitation of the analogy is that un-ironically accepting pronouns that otherwise bend the English language really costs us nothing, and gives us productive members of society instead of marginalized.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- alicemaz 6y agoI presume this is a consequence of the datasets they had to work off but it is really frustrating that they have one catchall "transgender and gender-diverse" category, segmenting by birth sex or particular gender identified with would be interesting/valuable
- 37r7rudjduj 6y agoI realize this might be rude but I'm not sure what the polite way to ask is, isn't your sex always your birth sex for the most part? Outside the effects of the medications and the cosmetic effects of the surgery isn't your body still mostly the same as far as the nuts, bolts, and genetic disorders, are concerned?
- spicywatermelon 6y agoMedication has a profound effect.
- mkr-hn 6y agoThat depends on what you mean by "sex." And even then, it's not a neat binary thing by any definition. Most things that involve humans fall on a bimodal distribution. Cropping out the wide fields in that distribution is convenient for statistics, forms, and rhetoric, but it doesn't reflect the true range humans are capable of.
- 37r7rudjduj 6y agoCan you elaborate on this more? I meant "sex" in the way that my physician would use the word. I'm aware of things like intersex conditions but, unless someone is actually intersex or otherwise complicated, your reply doesn't really answer my original question.
- transatlantic38 6y agoI'm not that poster but I can elaborate. Basically your physician couldn't easily use "biological sex" as a blanket term to accurately asses the risk factors and health needs of a medically transitioned person. Our sex is "otherwise complicated." The reason for this is that medical transition, primarily through the mechanism of hormone replacement therapy, actually changes some aspects of biological sex and the associated risk factors at a "nuts and bolts" level even though its not touching every single aspect of biological sex. It's not purely cosmetic, though that's a common misconception. Hormones ultimately control a lot about how human bodies express sex and the associated medical factors. In reality "biological sex" is composed of multiple sexually differentiated systems within the human biology that can theoretically operate somewhat independent of each other, and changing the dominate hormone in your body will flip or at least shove a lot of those systems towards the other end of the distribution. I guess a way to phrase this in developer terminology would be that "biological sex" is sometimes a leaky abstraction. As a personal example: despite my birth sex, it would be a mistake for my doctor to ask that I routinely get regular breast cancer screenings in the same way it would be a mistake to ask a cis man to regularly screen himself for breast cancer. My risk of breast cancer is much lower than a cis woman's and comparable to a cis man's. But at the same time I have absolutely zero risk of prostate cancer, and it would also be a mistake to try and test for that based on any possible symptoms I'm having. An ideally perfect doctor would be able take my history and be cognizant of what risk factors of biological sex, exactly, which conditions were associated with, and then be able to map that onto my body to figure out what I'm at risk for. As you can probably imagine, this is very difficult to do. A lot of times what makes a condition linked to sex isn't actually understood in the first place.
- leephillips 6y agoThere are so many ways to interpret a correlation such as this. For example, one possible obvious mechanism is that people in the trans community may be more likely to encourage autistic people to believe that they “are transgender”. The study uncritically uses the concept “transgender and gender-diverse individuals have elevated rates of autism” without ascribing any operational meaning to “transgender and gender-diverse individuals”. So, in my interpretation, this research is not part of biology or medicine, but merely a cultural exercise; a playing with terms.
- zaksoup 6y agoI've flagged this comment but I also feel the need to write a response because this kind of uncritical dog-whistle is something that actively contributes to violence against trans people. There's no evidence to suggest that trans folks encourage anybody, including autistic folks, to "believe that they're trans." However, there is myriad evidence that fear of trans folks "converting" other people is one of the motivating factors of violence against trans people. If there are "so many ways to interpret a correlation such as this" I'd encourage the parent commenter to consider using as examples ideas which have evidence to back them up and that are not directly linked as motivations behind violence against trans people.
- leephillips 6y agoYour objections are all from imagined motivation (“dog whistle”) or from imagined consequences of my being right. These are both informal fallacies, and not legitimate forms of argumentation. Unless you believe that the current unprecedented epidemic of adolescent girls deciding that they are trans has an organic origin, somebody is convincing them of this. My objections to the study are logical objections. Since the only definition of a “trans” person is somebody who says that he is trans, research such as this can be looked at as being essentially circular. EDIT (additions): Just for the record, I condemn any violence, or unkindness, toward trans people or anyone else. But those who are paying attention to the debates in this sphere will recognize this tactic: any questioning of currently fashionable “gender” ideas is met with the accusation that one’s speech will cause violence against trans people.
- jmcgough 6y agoMy mother's family is all autistic engineers. I and two of my cousins transitioned as teenagers, so I've had my own theories about this for years.
- neonate 6y agoI'd love to hear your theories if you'd be willing to share them.
- zaksoup 6y agoI'm not the OC but many of my friends and peers are trans and I find "agender" to be the most useful descriptor to myself. One thing I've noted is that once you start to identify the ways in which gender is fundamentally a social construct the link with autistic/neurodivergent folks makes much more sense. Anybody who struggles to instinctively navigate social norms and behaviors will also struggle to instinctively navigate gendered norms and behaviors, simply because the two are inextricable.
- trans-stealth 6y agoThat pretty much describes my relationship with gender. I was undiagnosed as a kid, gender was confusing, different standards were confusing. I just didn't care, among other reasons, I decided to transition. Very happy, but still have an idea of how I would navigate things different... but that's life, right?
- klipt 6y ago> Anybody who struggles to instinctively navigate social norms and behaviors will also struggle to instinctively navigate gendered norms and behaviors, simply because the two are inextricable. But if masculine and feminine gender roles are equally difficult to navigate, that doesn't explain why transitioning would help. You'd just be swapping out one difficult gender role with another.
- seba_dos1 6y ago
- trans-stealth 6y agoOne other correlation I have seen is "intelligence" <-> trans person. It's very weird how many absurdly smart people happen to be trans. It plays into the idea that mental illness correlates with IQ.
- cl0rkster 6y agoBeing "mentally ill" and having the specifics of that diagnosis changed every time the DSM does due to social pressure (from homosexual/bipolar DSM 4 to schizo in DSM 5), I honestly think "mentally ill" has just become another loaded term. Most "menatlly ill" people are simply people who have used the faculties that have to choose to be abnormal. The reasons for that non-conformist decision are varied, but are rarely irrational. Generally, I've found that any non-conformist person, regardless the category of such they've been assigned, has a unique and valuable perspective at some level if you just get to know them. Sadly, that's rare in an age where everything new is threatening and everyone I don't understand is the boogey man. Protected groups do the same villification to those who practice societal norms. A genuine smile and a ready heart for other people that also bleed red and feel more pain than life should ever have allowed is probably a better start than pissing matches over who is right and who is evil. TLDR - non-conformists are almost always interesting and brilliant in some sense, but they generally lack the ability to reach within the Overton window and effect change.
- turing_complete 6y agoDo you have any source on that? It sounds like it might be just anecdotal due to the fact that trans people tend to be more noticeable.
- alicemaz 6y agoprevious poster's claim is a common piece of folk wisdom that ultimately stems from this paper: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16298429/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16298429/ 2005, n=187. the authors are blanchardites so the language they use is needlessly confusing, but they find 107.3 mean iq among the male-attracted trans women, 121.7 among the female-attracted interestingly while pulling this up I also found this one from 1967(!) https://nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.2164-0947.1967.tb02279.x https://nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.2... n=34, which found half in the 110-119 range and eight over 140
- timwaagh 6y agotrans people, might reasonably be described as people "whose attempts to make friends are odd and typically unsuccessful". Since that phrase got ripped straight off the dsm diagnostic criteria for autism on https://www.autismspeaks.org/autism-diagnosis-criteria-dsm-5 https://www.autismspeaks.org/autism-diagnosis-criteria-dsm-5, it should not be any surprise whatsoever that these are correlated (same as with any other category of significantly 'odd' people).
- trans-stealth 6y ago>trans people, might reasonably be described as people "whose attempts to make friends are odd and typically unsuccessful". Is this a quote from the article? I can't seem to find it. That is very much not the case in my opinion. Many trans people are social and have both cis (non-trans) and trans friends.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- timwaagh 6y agoThe quoted line is from the site I mentioned (ie its a diagnostic criterion for autism). Being social has nothing to do with it. Many trans people don't completely pass as their gender of choice. This lands them in somewhat of an uncanny valley and makes it more difficult for them to make friends compared to the average person.
- renaicirc 6y ago> trans people, might reasonably be described as people "whose attempts to make friends are odd and typically unsuccessful". This is a thoroughly bizarre assertion. Why can trans people be described thus?
- timwaagh 6y agoThey usually don't quite look like their gender of choice landing them in somewhat of an uncanny valley. Me or you will have an instinctive negative reaction to them which will then have to be overcome. Of course that doesn't mean they never make any friends. But that is not what is being said. What is being said is they will have more unsuccessful attempts than the average person.
- BTCOG 6y agoI'm super going to get dissed/downvoted for this one, but this is mild confirmation that changing genders/creating numerous imaginary genders is truly a mental illness. Face reality. Mental illness is spreading rapidly, (and worsening in pandemic) and we don't do enough to talk candidly about it. And for the record, I'm not being "mean" or trying to offend, I'm being dead serious.
- im3w1l 6y agoAutists are disproportionally online. This matters for two reasons. The first is that on the internet you can easily assume any identity. The second is that the trans lobby has much stronger control over online than offline spaces. The pattern is clearly visible in this thread. Views that you might hear from "the man on the street" are flagged or downvoted.
- spicywatermelon 6y agoIf "the man on the street" shared their views when evaluating a transgender person's job / grant application that would invite discrimination lawsuits in many jurisdictions. That's an IRL flagging.
- im3w1l 6y agoOh certainly. But this doesn't change my point. That autists and neurotypicals come across different perspectives due to the differences in how they socialize.
- just_no 6y agoAs expected, the highbrow scholars of HN have littered this thread with ignorant transphobic comments. Yet again. Maybe leave behind the bigotry before slapping your keyboards?
- seba_dos1 6y agoI've already seen people suggesting that this link exists, but I've always read it the other way around - that there are elevated rates of transgenderism along autistic people, which kinda makes sense to me. People on the spectrum ask themselves more questions about their own bodies and feelings and don't get easily satisfied by adhering to social norms as neurotypicals do.
- skohan 6y agoSome form of interrelationship would make sense right? It seems that a lot of gender is tied up in social signaling, which is less relevant to people on the spectrum. For instance, social signaling might regulate gender-non-conformance in a way which is felt less strongly to people on the spectrum.
- dang 6y agoAll: there's quite a bit that's interesting here, so please don't post predictable things on any side of the discussion. If it's a political talking point, it's a predictable thing, so please omit those. Instead, remember this from the site guidelines: Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. Fortunately there are many commenters in the thread exemplifying that spirit, so no one has far to look for fine examples. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- knolax 6y agoPsychology is the same field that recommended lobotomies roughly a generation ago. Unlike the difference between medieval plague doctors and modern doctors, it does not seem that psychology has reformed in that time, and as such anything coming out of that field should be regarded as noise.
- threatofrain 6y agoThat would be psychiatry.
- knolax 6y agoSame difference.
- fxtentacle 6y agoIt's well documented that autistic individuals are having difficulties resolving or tolerating emotionally conflicting situations. If a male non-autist has girlish interests, he might be proud of his uniqueness and thereby accept it as part of himself. For a male autist, the socially conflicting girlish interests will be much more painful, thereby driving a higher percentage of autists to resolve the conflict by adjusting their gender. That would also explain the data, but with causality reversed. And from personal experience: I received a lot of criticism as a kid because I was a guy but I liked purple shorts and playing dress-up with my sisters. It's just that since I never identified with the stereotypical guys from movies, I wasn't bothered that other people considered me unequal to them. But I've seen how much effort my math genius classmate put into proving his manliness, so I assume the gossip about us having girlish interests must have bothered him a lot more than me.
- sascha_sl 6y agoI see arguments like this a lot, and they usually miss the importance and impact of hormonal transition. I'm trans, and thus in trans circles a lot, and almost everyone I know had some high impact mental health issue resolve upon starting hormonal transition, even if those were present before they realized they were trans. These range from generic depression over behavior that gets people autism diagnoses that suddenly resolve to a depersonalization. [1] Even if you want to attribute those to placebo, the effect is so pronounced and long-lastingly positive, it wouldn't really matter if it was. Gender dysphoria is measurable[2], and gender dysphoria severe enough to lead someone to transition seems to be rooted more deeply than just the socially constructed assignments of what constitutes male and female behavior. Of course gender-non-conformance would still be expressed more strongly in such people. What is also positively correlated to transness are conditions that could be classified as intersex, even if we don't generally diagnose them as such because they have no easy to recognize physical impact. We know about some of those, pre-natal exposure to estrogens for instance. And I'm sure there's a lot of factors we're entirely missing. There are a few neurology studies that show deviations that are are usually associated with the other sex in transgender people, even before they can hormonally transition. [1]: https://the-orbit.net/zinniajones/2013/09/that-was-dysphoria-8-signs-and-symptoms-of-indirect-gender-dysphoria/ https://the-orbit.net/zinniajones/2013/09/that-was-dysphoria... [2]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30991464/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30991464/
- acd 6y agoI think it would be good for people with autism to investigate probiotic food supplements. Digestive tummy issues is more common in people with autism. This is likely due to differences in tummy food metabolism in people with autism. There is a link between brain / autism and metabolism in the tummy bacteria system. I would recommend looking into and reading up on Biogaia l.reuteri dsm 17938 and l.reuteri atc pta 6475. Brand name “Biogaia Gastrus”. There is a sub community which blends these food supplements with Yoghurt. Some people report better functionality of autism eating Biogaia Blue. Do Internet search for these Probiotic strands and Autism. Hope this can help.
- andai 6y agoMicrobiota transfer improves autism symptoms https://microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40168-016-0225-7 https://microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186...
- hannob 6y agoI think the last thing autistic people need is snakeoil salesmen telling them what product they should buy that has no scientific basis whatsoever.
- jpxw 6y agoNot just “higher”, the paper is talking about 3,4,5 or even more times higher.
- Bostonian 6y agoIf a trans person is mentally ill, you should not perform on him or her an irreversible surgery that removes healthy body parts. The incorrect beliefs are the problem, not the genitals. You would not "confirm" the beliefs of an anorexic that she is fat when she is not.
- ausbah 6y agothis is not a thoughtful or informative comment. I would suggest adding something of substance to the discussion or removing your comment
- UncleMeat 6y ago> You would not "confirm" the beliefs of an anorexic that she is fat when she is not. That's true. Because we have scientific evidence demonstrating that this is not an effective treatment. The reason why this is not a meaningful analogy is that we have scientific evidence in the opposite direction for transitioning. It works. Medicine does not operate on analogies and gut feelings.
- social_quotient 6y agoOff topic: I appreciate the HN community for being able to tackle the discussion and a topic like this in a substantive way.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jjcothrow 6y agoCan someone answer my genuine question on this topic? At my high school in California I knew a trans girl (m to f used she/her) that was super chill and maybe a bit on the spectrum. At the same time there were a couple dozen girls that called themselves trans and asked everyone to use they/them but acted and dressed all 100% within female stereotypes (not that trans is about stereotypes I’m just illustrating my point). I didn’t know any boys that did this. Has the term trans grown beyond just (for lack of a better term) those with body dysmorphia? What is this second category of trans because I have yet to figure it out.
- chordalkeyboard 6y agobriefly, expecting a trans person to have dysmorphia is called "transmedicalism." it's highly controversial in the trans community because on the one side you have people who suffer from gender dysmorphia who don't always like the idea that other people are transitioning because of a preference; on the other side you have people advocate that gender identity is a personal choice and should not be subject to a particular diagnosis by a professional.
- sascha_sl 6y agoTwo big factors go into not liking transmedicalism * it usually relies on very narrow definitions of gender dysphoria. The relation between gender dysphoria and gender euphoria for instance is often discarded. Gender dysphoria itself is poorly defined and often does not specifically manifest as gender-related until the idea is confronted. Lots of trans people suppressed for years or sometimes decades because they thought their pain was not specific enough to not be rejected by gatekeeping. * it does not account for people that feel more comfortable outside the gender binary, no matter if they want to medically transition (some do). Transmeds and "truscum" often require strict adherence to binary gender norms, in alignment to historical guidelines where doing anything not absolutely in alignment with your binary gender would set you back significantly.
- wittyreference 6y ago> Has the term trans grown beyond just (for lack of a better term) those with body dysmorphia? As far as I am aware, no. But bear in mind that there’s not always an abrupt transition between gender-associated behavior, due to social circumstances beyond personal preference. High School, a setting which implies an age where parental figures retain overwhelming leverage over minors’ lives, is a fairly good example. E.g. clothing choices at home are open to parental scrutiny, whereas pronoun use at school is not. Beyond that, though, like any term that is applied at one’s own volition and in response to subjective internal cues, there is going to be some variation in the folks identifying that way. Not in a “liar” sort of way, just in a “there’s no precise cut-off on what behaviors or feelings constitute trans” kind of way. Especially as social stigma decreases or, depending on one’s precise social micro-environment, possibly even turns into a form of social prestige. Again, without any deceit intended, you can imagine that someone that feels they fall in a gray area and needs to explore their identity may verbalize (or even conceptualize) that feeling differently based on the quality and magnitude of social connotation.
- sullyj3 6y agoSeems possible it arises from a greater willingness to accept things about themselves and do things like transitioning that are socially stigmatized.